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What to Make of Clairvoyant Baba Vanga?

The rise of ISIS and recent terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have caused a new wave of frenzied speculation about the prophecies of a blind Bulgarian clairvoyant who allegedly made many accurate predictions of world events before her death 20 years ago.

News.com.au is reporting on the story of Baba Vanga, a clairvoyant whose many predictions include a “great Muslim war” which would take place in Europe, starting with a Muslim invasion of the continent by extremists in 2016. The war, which would play out mostly in Syria and involve the use of chemical weapons against Europeans, would come to a conclusion in 2043 with the establishment of a caliphate headquartered in Rome.

For those of you who never heard of Vanga, she was born Vangelia Pandeva Dimitrova in Strumica, in what was then the Ottoman Empire. Popular lore says she led an ordinary life until the age of 12 when she was picked up by a freak tornado and then dashed to the ground. Her family claims she was found in terrible condition with her injured eyes sealed shut by a crusty layer of dust and dirt. Because they were too poor to afford medical care, she was left untreated and remained blind.

Vanga, as she later came to be called, claims to have experienced her first vision during the days following the storm and found herself to be suddenly capable of predicting the future and healing people. Her powers were convincing enough to generate ever-growing attention until she eventually developed a kind of cult following.

“She became the go-to psychic for the rich and powerful and admirers, among them heads of state, scientists and historians, would come from all over the world for a few minutes in her company,” reports News.com.au.

Her followers say she has an 85 percent success rate, which has earned her the nickname “Nostradamus of the Balkans”.

Enormously popular in Russia, Vanga’s big breakthrough in that country came about when followers say she correctly predicted the tragic sinking of the Kursk, a Russian submarine, whose 118 sailors perished before anyone could rescue them. From that point on, her Russian followers claimed they had “proof” that she predicted all kinds of things such as the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the melting of polar ice caps, etc.

Among her alleged correct prophecies, she predicted the 9/11 terror attack in 1989 in which she said: “Horror! Horror! The American brethren will fall after being attacked by the steel birds.” She added: “Innocent blood will gush.”

She also supposedly predicted that the 44th U.S. president would be African American – and that he would be the “last U.S. president.”

Her followers also believe that her description of a “huge wave” descending on a “big coast, covering people and towns and (causing) everything to disappear under the water” was a reference to the 2004 tsunami that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in Sumatra, Indonesia.

She predicted that aliens would help civilization on earth to live underwater by 2130 and there would be a war on Mars in 3005. The world would not last much longer, she predicted, and claimed everything on earth would be dead by 3797 – but humans would have since abandoned the planet to move to another star system.

Vanga died in 1996 at the age of 85.

So what gives? Did she really make these predictions and, if so, how is this possible?

First of all, it’s almost impossible to know exactly what Vanga predicted because most of the information we have is coming from “cult-like followers” who could, in some cases, be irrationally devoted to her.

Second, we’re only hearing about the predictions that supposedly came true. Almost no one reports on the ones that didn’t – such as how a third world war would begin in 2010 and how the earth’s orbit would shift in 2013. Oops!

But even if some of her predictions could be verified and proven true, this still doesn’t mean that her powers came from God. We know from Deuteronomy 18:10 that God abhors those who “practice divination”, so He would not be the power behind her prophecies.

However, Satan, who is a preternatural being possessed of exalted intelligence and powers beyond our imagination, is certainly capable of deducing possible future events. Although he does not have the power to know our future, how hard is it to deduce a possible future Muslim invasion of Europe when a de facto invasion has been taking place there for years through the European Union’s immigration policies?

Christians should have nothing to do with the prophecies of clairvoyants regardless of how accurate their predictions appear to be.